So, what is heat recovery ventilation anyway?
Here’s our 6 step explanation
It’s a whole house ventilation system and if it’s installed it means your home has been built to ‘keep the heat in’. This is all well and good, but the building and you need to breathe, and the heat recovery ventilation system is managing air in and out of the home to keep you comfortable and the air fresh and healthy
The heat recovery unit is usually located in the loft space (house) or in a cupboard (apartment). It’s on all of the time, running at a low level doing it’s job (and it’s uber efficient… keep reading)
It’s extracting moisture and pollutants from what is called the ‘wet rooms’ – bathroom, kitchen, utility, wc’s. This air travels out of each room via a valve in the ceiling, though the ducting and heat recovery unit before it’s expelled to outside
At the same time as extracting, it is drawing in air from outside to provide supply air to what is called ‘habitable rooms’ – living rooms, bedrooms. This air travels in through the ducting, passed through the heat recovery unit and then delivered via valves in the ceiling
All air coming into the home is filtered to remove dust, pollen etc (this is via filters inside the unit)
Here’s the energy efficient bit… Not only does it have efficient motors, so it doesn’t cost a lot to run per year, before the extracted air (point 3 above) is taken outside, the heat recovery system recovers the heat in the air, stores it and then adds it to the incoming air. This means the air from outside which is being filtered is also being slightly warmed. This helps reduce your heating bill in the winter! (and in the summer it turns itself off automatically, because you don’t need more warm air coming in)
